“You should know,” Victor said harshly. “The spirit board was your gang’s idea, remember?”
“I don’t have a gang, Mr. West Side Story,” I spat. “And it wasn’t my idea either.”
“But you did something,” Dorian said softly, turning to look at me. “Didn’t you?”
“I wasn’t in on your prank,” I said, feeling completely confused. “What are you even on about?”
“She’s telling the truth,” Mara said. “She doesn’t know anything about it. It was probably those other two.”
Dorian looked relieved. “All right then.”
What the hell was even going on? “All right? Mara says so, and everything’s okay? That’s it?”
“That’s it.” He walked over to my dad as if the conversation was over.
“Leave it, Margo,” Mara said. “You don’t get it.”
“That’s obvious.”
Victor snorted then followed Dorian.
“You were never supposed to,” Mara said wearily before joining them.
Dad gave everyone jobs, pairing me up with Dorian as though he wanted to make things more awkward. We used a wheelbarrow to transport bags of dirt across the garden in silence.
A door slammed somewhere nearby, and Dorian flinched. I wasn’t the only jumpy one. I looked around the garden, my gaze landing on a patch of violets.
“Where are you going?” Dorian asked sharply. “You’re supposed to be helping me.”
I froze, realising I had left him to walk over to the flowers. “I just thought I saw a… mouse or something,” I muttered then returned to help him. Not that he needed my help. He was fine pushing the wheelbarrow alone.
After a few more moments of complete and utter dead silence, I couldn’t take it anymore. “How did you do it?” I demanded. “How did you fake the glass and your wounds?”
He stared at me for a long time. “Let’s drop the subject.”
“I don’t want to—” I whirled around as a strange sensation filtered around me.
“Margo?”
“Déjà vu.” It was like my dream, some kind of pull, a sense of urgency that gripped me so tightly, my heart pounded. I’d felt it before, figured it was a panic attack, a trigger for the sleepwalking.
“Margo, seriously, what’s wrong?” He gently gripped my wrist. “Your heart is racing.”
I shrugged Dorian off, focusing instead on what was bothering me. He was right about my heart, butsomethinghad to cause the panic.
I remembered—the same thing had happened at the party. Fear had filled me, a sense of foreboding I couldn’t shake, but it was that feeling that had drawn me to the spirit board. I’d traced an invisible line that had been cut short. That’s when everything had gone to hell. Something…somethingweird was going on. I knew it—everyone knew it—but nobody could say exactly what it was.
“Margo.”
I took a step back, feeling as though something were advancing on me. I glanced around and saw nothing, but I held up my hands, panicked as I half-feared I was losing my mind. Sleep-walking while awake. That was new.
I braced myself… and then it hit me. Nothing, but a nothing so hard that I flew backward and right into Dorian’s arms.
“What the hell?” I said with a whimper, rubbing at a sudden pain in my chest.
“Are you all right?” Dorian asked, holding on as though I were about to faint or something.
“What wasthat?” I asked.